Facebook today has pushed an update to its stand-alone Facebook Messenger apps for iOS and Android. It’s not really a huge update in terms of new features. In fact, if you will check both the change logs of the app from either the App Store or Google Play store, you’ll only find two significant new features. These are the ability to send a quick voice message and call friends right from Messenger for free.

Now, let’s get down to the fine details of these two new features of Facebook Messenger app. The first one being the ability to send short voice messages. This is useful when you have more to say and typing them off becomes too tedious. So you can now just tap and hold the red record button which should appear when you’re composing a message after you’ve tapped the “+” icon, speak your message and a clickable sound wave icon will appear in-line, as part of the current Messenger conversation.

You can send up to a 1-minute voice message which is enough to convey more thoughts than what you can type especially when it’s close to impossible to type off your message. Good when you’re driving or both your hands are busy doing something else.

As for the ability to call your friends right within the app, this is being tested only for Canadian users for now. When it gets ironed out and rolled out to other users, it will allow you to place free voice calls to friends. This feature is also exclusive for iOS for now.

It will be interesting to find out how these two new features will suit up Facebook against Apple’s own Facetime app as well as other VoIP platforms with mobile app presence in both Android and iOS. The key here is that Facebook can leverage on its userbase to push this feature to success and eventually fare up against other mobile VoIP clients.

Latest Facebook Messenger App update is really awesome. Voice messaging is exactly what we all waited for for so long. However there’s still one thing missing. Members of numerous Facebook Groups and Events don’t actually have a native tool for live voice conversations.

We’re trying to change this with GroupVox app that brings live voice messaging to existing Facebook Groups and Events. It feels natural to send voice notes to communities you’re a part of, right from any iOS device, Android or using built-in web-based player on Facebook. All voice messages are stored on Group’s Timeline and can be played anytime.

Check it out at Google Play and at AppStore. It’s free.
https://www.facebook.com/GroupVox